Page 164 of By the Flames of Her Fury

I hit the wall again, hard enough to split my knuckles. The force reverberated into my injured shoulder, and I nearly buckled under the pain. Shadows danced at the edge of my vision. Everything was growing steadily colder, and I knew it wasn’t the water. Darkness seeped along the fringes of my mind, fingers of shadow tugging me closer to my fate.

“It won’t be long now,” the darkness inside me hissed. “Let go, Illusionist.”

Then I saw the frightened look on Tessa’s face. The wide eyes, the pinched forehead, the shallow breaths as she tried to hold herself together. I no longer cared what happened to me, but I had to get her out of this alive.

Think, Everett. Think.

“Tessa,” I snapped, spinning sluggishly in the deep water. “Can you shift and climb the walls? Find a crack or something?”

She nodded and shifted mid-jump, sailing to the nearest wall in her small cat form. She scaled to the ceiling and tested all the corners and crevices as quickly as she could, but I knew it was no use. Mortep had completely sealed us in. The water splashed the top of my chest. It poured from every fracture in the walls, cascading in golden sheets that rose at a terrifying speed.

Another sharp, burning pain lanced through my shoulder. I sucked in a breath, clutching my hand to the throbbing wound. I could feel it traveling lower, steadily inching toward my heart.

Not now. Not yet.

Tessa shifted back into a human and landed with a splash next to me. “Ev, we’ve got to move.”

I pointed at the walls. “There’s nowhere to go.” My illusions were useless here. I couldn’t break stone, I couldn’t trick the waves, I couldn’t⁠—

Pain flared in my shoulder again, worse this time. I wheezed through my teeth, trying to hold back a shout.

“Everett, look…” Tessa’s horrified tone broke off as she stared at my raised arm. My veins had turned pitch black. I ripped open my shirt to find the inky darkness crawling across my chest. Shadows quivered just beneath the skin, some leaking out in little wisps and curling across the golden water.

“Let us in, Illusionist.”

I clenched my jaw, forcing down the voice of the wraith. “I’m fine,” I bit out.

“Stop lying. It’s the infection.” Tessa was usually cool and collected under pressure, but now, her voice broke into a sob. The water was so high on her, she was barely keeping her head above the surface. “It’s going to kill you.”

“I can hold it,” I rasped, even as shadows flew from my lips. The coldness froze my limbs. “I have to hold⁠—”

Water lapped at my neck.

“You’re out of time.”

Tessa swam to the nearest wall and clung to it, frantically looking for any way out. I felt the wraith inside pulling my mind down, down, like a weight dragging my limbs. But as I stared at Tessa and the wall, a memory came back to me.

A shadow wraith slipping through the stone of the crypt like it was nothing. The one at the mausoleum that scratched me had dissolved straight into the solid wall, then reformed on the other side.

I raised my arm above water and gazed at the shadows. They wrapped around my hand and, just for a moment…I let it take over.

My arm disappeared into smoke.

I gasped, reining the wraith back in. I struggled to hold on to myself—my flesh, my blood, my mind—as my hand turned solid once more.

“Tessa, I know what to do,” I said.

“What?”

“A shadow wraith,” I forced out, my voice more gravelly by the second. “It can go through solid objects.”

Realization struck her. “No. Absolutely not. You can’t⁠—”

“We’re out of time.” As I spoke, my breath turned to shadows. “I can let it take me. I can pass through the wall and find a way to get you out.”

“You’re insane!” she shouted above the roaring water. “You don’t even know how it works! You’ll be a wraith, Ev. What if you can’t turn back?”

“I can. For long enough to help you.” I breathed out more shadows. Color disappeared, turning the world into shades of gray and black. “If Vera raises the kingdom. The magic will…” I closed my eyes and shuddered. “Will end it.”